[cognito20]

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Is this a surprise?

To win a Nobel Prize these days you have to be against the US or US foreign policy. Even if the prize is in a category that has nothing to do with it.

Alfred Nobel is turning in his grave at the misuse that his prizes have been put to.

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I tend to agree with your general point. The Literature prize last year was given to some left-wing Austrian hack that I'd never even HEARD of, and I'm a Barnes and Noble store manager when I'm not playing poker. ;-) In this particular case I feel compelled to note that Pinter is a great playwright (who also happens to be an outspoken critic of US foreign policy, which has nothing to do whatsoever with the literary quality of his work) , and probably deserved the Nobel Prize, on literary merit, a long time ago. _The Birthday Party_ and _The Dumb Waiter_, just to name two, are some of the seminal works of absurdist theatre. He deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Beckett and Ionesco, and he's a hell of a lot better than Edward Albee. They could've given the prize to someone a lot worse.

That having been said, there were better candidates available. I'd have given it to Philip Roth if it was my choice (actually, I'd give it to Thomas Pynchon, but he'll never win it because he's so reclusive that the Swedish Academy would never vote him the prize for fear of him declining it like he did the National Book Award for _Gravity's Rainbow_), but I think either Joyce Carol Oates or Margaret Atwood would have been just as or more deserving. And one of these days, I really would love to see Stephen King (yes, you read that right, Stephen King) given serious consideration for the Nobel Literature Prize. Some of the book snobs (and I deal with them every day at work) laugh at me when I say that, but with the exception of _The Tommyknockers_, which he wrote when he was self-admittedly on a 6-month cocaine binge, name a BAD or WORTHLESS book he's ever written. You can't. You might like some less than others, but they're all -at least- entertaining. There are authors, but not many, who are more PROLIFIC than Stephen King. There are authors, a few more but still not many, who are BETTER WRITERS than Stephen King. NO ONE can match the combination. The Nobel Prize in Literature is a lifetime achievement award, and there isn't a living author who's achieved more than Stephen King.

But until that day comes, we could do worse than Harold Pinter as a Nobel laureate.

--Scott